The Conservatives asked Mark Clarke to get someone to 'shoot' the people complaining about him

Mark Clarke is at the
centre of an alleged bullying scandal that has rocked the
Conservative Party.YouTube

The Conservative Party received a complaint from a young Tory
activist about Mark Clarke in May 2014 — just two months
before Clarke became the boss of RoadTrip 2015.

Clarke's role in the Conservative Party is now the subject of an
internal party investigation after a young activist committed
suicide after complaining about Clarke's alleged bullying inside
the party.

An email, published
by The Sun, shows that Josh Hitchens, the former
president of the LSE Conservative society, complained about
Clarke to staff at Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ),
about an email he had received from Clarke.

According to the Sun, Hitchens received an aggressive email from
Clarke after writing a newspaper article that was critical of
Conservative Future, a Tory youth movement Clarke
was involved with.

The email published by the Sun shows that just 10 hours after
CCHQ received the complaint, an advisor to former co-Chairman of
the Conservative Party Grant Shapps forwarded the complaint on to
Clarke.

The advisor included a note to Clarke appearing to suggest that
in the future it would be safer to get someone else to "shoot"
people instead of sending aggressive emails himself. Business
Insider has reached out to the advisor, asking him to confirm
exactly what he meant by the word "shoot."

The note said:

Might be safer press-wise for you to go around smiling at people,
and getting someone else to shoot them.

In September 2015, a young Conservative activist called Elliott
Johnson took his own life and left a note alleging that he had
been bullied by Clarke. Along with the note,
Johnson left
a recording that appears to reveal both Clarke and Andre
Walker, the man referred to in the email above, threatening to
expose Johnson for a minor mistake he may have made in
violation of election law.

The law firm Clifford Chance is currently doing an investigation
into the circumstances surrounding the death of Johnson.